That's the Mohammedan Men's Club in action. Sharia is the choice we are given by the Saudi sponsored Wahabbi Mosques everywhere. American women had better chose a side in that fight while the are still legal persons.

Julian Assange has assured us that any Afghan who opposes the Taliban (or who the Taliban just don't much like) is guilty of treason, so we have to accept this. The Taliban are just "crushing bastards".

How unPC of you to point out the cultural differences between us and the Taliban. Don't you know that all cultures are equal? Besides, if western feminists aren't decrying Taliban atrocities against Moslem women and girls, what right do we have to point out their barbarity?

Attacks on schools in Afghanistan, particularly girls’ schools, have been rife in recent years, with most of them carried out by insurgents. A spokesman for the Ministry of Education, Gul Agha Ahmadi, said 60 schools had been burned down or destroyed so far this year. Cases where acid is thrown on girl students take place frequently in the south, and occasionally even in Kabul.

If Bush hadn't of built all those schools with our tax dollars than those girls would be safe at home...

But now their being forced to go to school and are being used as human shields for the legitimate target-our war mongering troops. Make that Bush's warmongering troops, because no Democrat politician I know actually supports the war anymore.

Obama you say?

Listen Obama's support has been negligible to the point that all the decent Euros saw that he was giving them a graceful exit point, which will give us more of an excuse to leave. Besides, Obama is just "cleaning up".

Well, Dead Julius, I suggest you go and sit in the school with the girls for a few months and see what is just what. Better yet. Go undercover and wear a burka and get a real taste of political convenience.

Obviously 60 schools being burnt to the ground-all girl schools-and acid being thrown in the faces of school girls....makes you want to spin that-how exactly?

Those are things that any bad person can pull off. Poison gas is chemical warfare-- a different category altogether. It is very politically convenient for the American establishment to be able to claim that the Taliban are resorting to attacks with chemical weapons on schoolgirls.

Apparently the shooting gallery in the Afghan Mountain valleys is now filling with Obama's surge of new human targets in the valleys just in time for the attack by Taliban Raiders who need more training on their ambushes and sniping skills down into ambushed and IED'd human targets. What is it that we wanted to win there again? We need permanent troops on the Mountains as well as in the valleys, or we lose. Putting 30,000 more men into the valleys for 12 months is egregious stupidity. We need 600,000 more men over there permanently, or we need to withdraw to a better terrain.

(the Crypto-Jew)I'm suspicious of these "poison gas" reports, too. After all, the Taliban were always a supportive, community-oriented, kite-flying people…just because they execute people, and throw acid in the face of young girls, or beat their mothers, I mean who could IMAGINE that they’d use harsher methods?

Or Julius, you’re ok with retail mayhem, a fist here, a bullet there, some acid in the face some other place, but to use poison gas, well hey ho that’s just out of bounds?!?!

WV; "butfor" but for the likes of the ACLU and John Edwards and Markos Moulitsas, we'd have the Amrican Taliban here.

(the Crypto-Jew)How many of you will send your sons and daughters to die in order to fix the problem?

How many of you think it is fine for someone else's son or daughter to die?

As only 105 of the US populace fought WII and even fewer fought the Civil War, I guess those wars were pretty suspect, too, eh?

I guess unless I’m willing to be a firefighter or police officer, I shouldn’t presume to sue their services?

However, if the firefighter/soldier/sailor/Marine isn’t willing to go to law school can they use a lawyer? And if they won’t be a fry cook, can they eat at McDonald’s? Or does this sort of “argumentation” only go one way?

FYI The regular all volunteer services are being used, but many National Guard units are also over their for their third tour in 5 years. Those citizens expected to be called up in a war, but did not volunteer to be thrown away in a political gamesmanship to appear tough by dying in the Afghan nowhere for no reason forever.

FYI The regular all volunteer services are being used, but many National Guard units are also over their for their third tour in 5 years. Those citizens expected to be called up in a war, but did not volunteer to be thrown away in a political gamesmanship to appear tough by dying in the Afghan nowhere for no reason forever.

Bullshit. Anyone who signed up for the National Guard after 9/12/2001 understands that there's a lot more to being in the Guard than showing up one weekend a month and a 2-week summer camp every year. They're not stupid.

Flexo - "There are some people who are always saying "So what? To hell with them. U.S. out of Afghanistan! "

And those people are right. The US can no longer economically afford to be the world's 9/11 service and nation-builder to win the hearts and minds of natives who hate us and have no intent of changing their barbaric ways.

We need to get out.

They gas girls and pull full-frontal Sharia? There are ways to make them leper nations like Israel, Somalia, and N Korea currently are.

Unless these barbaric shitholes directly threaten the United States and it's vital interests, stay clear.If they mess with us, bomb the hell out of them with our full power until adequate punishment is meted out - and leave not a cent for them to rebuild their rubbled buildings or a single wheatsack to feed "hungry women and children whose husband is off on Jihad".

Maguro...Afghanistan has been a 9 year war. We are wearing out the regular military and the National Guard. The point is that volunteers will stop volunteering and that our armed forces will wither away unless we re-start a Draft Lottery. Draft has never worked out well in wars without a cogent reason and without a possibility for a victory. What do you recommend we do other than say gotcha to the National Guardsmen and their families.

garage, if you want to believe that it was the right who was calling Bush=Hitler for the 8 years of his tenure then by all means don't let me get in the way of your alternate universe creation.

No, if you had read, I asked why YOU guys keep calling him Bushitler. If I were trying to make the case that it was the left using the term though, I wouldn't link to right wing blogs using the term. You would think that would go without saying.

(the Crypto-Jew)Maguro...Afghanistan has been a 9 year war. We are wearing out the regular military and the National Guard. The point is that volunteers will stop volunteering and that our armed forces will wither away unless we re-start a Draft Lottery. Draft has never worked out well in wars without a cogent reason and without a possibility for a victory. What do you recommend we do other than say gotcha to the National Guardsmen and their families.

If you had some recruiting numbers to back that assertion up I might buy into it more. We need a draft, really Representative Rangel, shouldn’t be with your lawyer preparing your testimony for the Ethics Panel?

Those are things that any bad person can pull off. Poison gas is chemical warfare-- a different category altogether. It is very politically convenient for the American establishment to be able to claim that the Taliban are resorting to attacks with chemical weapons on schoolgirls.

Are you honestly going to proclaim that the 'poison attack on schoolgirls' is nothing more than a US enabled propaganda tool? Well, then I guess Saddam sending Chemical Ali to gas Kurds was kabuki theater? Look, I understand not wanting to take things at face value, but the Taliban are nothing more than barbarians in night shirts. They need to be eradicated. Are you down for that or not?

Joe... I have a relationship with the Commanding officer of the 48th Infantry Brigade based in Macon Georgia that has now been activated for the last 5 years with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are wearing out the endurance of these men. If we love the American Military and the real men's men serving in the units, then we cannot continue to ignore these realities. Ask Ann Coulter if it is politically Conservative to keep ignoring these realities.

I look at your avatar and think, how the Armed Forces improved you! I bet you that you didn’t use the word “F#ck” nearly as much prior to being invited to serve as after and your world view, I can only imagine what it did to your world view…I bet you were happy before you were drafted….it made a man of you. If you’re a man, otherwise it made a womon of you…unless of course you reject the oppressive hetero-normal gender stereotypes, that place us in iron-bound heuristic categories!

Joe...What Ann Coulter and myself are pointing out lately is that we need to be loyal to our own citizen soldiers' situation more than we are loyal to the Northern Alliance's situation in Afghanistan. Continual war is not an answer. And pretending that we are winning something we can defend without a continual war in Afghanistan is not an answer.

I thought the bit about everyone assuming that the sickness was mass hysteria (because girls have that don't ya' know) on account of harassment and acid attacks was particularly politically convenient. Didn't you?

Joe - "IF we come home and the Taliban come to power, they’re going to KILL those folks who helped us.

And then the next time the Taliban cause us trouble, there won’t be anyone for the Special Forces Troops to ally with, to defeat the Taliban"

We have no obligation give a lifetime of defense and help to one faction in a barbarous land that allied with us to kill a mutual enemy.

Nor will there ever be a lack of willingness by any tribal barbarian to cooperate with American agents who come in and say "We are here to help you kill your old enemy quick and easy and you barely have to lift a finger - because they attacked us in America - Just point at the best enemy shit shit you think we should blow up."

...the Taliban are nothing more than barbarians in night shirts. They need to be eradicated. Are you down for that or not?

It don't matter whether I am down for that or not.

I don't make the decisions about these things. Our professional leaders do, and they are supposed to have more information and more knowledge about the situation than folks like you and me.

Besides, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats seem to be particularly interested in eliminating the Taliban. Bush sent in far too few troops from the beginning, and the apparent (and politically helpful!) initial victories have been shown to be meaninglessly superficial. We've been losing and we continue to lose. Our defeat thus far has prompted Obama to send in more troops, but they are still far too few in number; I think traditionalguy's 600K is an appropriate ballpark figure for the number of troops we ought to commit if we actually want to succeed.

But Republicans and Democrats don't seem to want to succeed. Why not? Because it doesn't matter to them. For the American establishment, victory is defined as winning the next round of elections here in America. As far as they are concerned, the Afgans and our troops there can go ahead and die.

I had a job, apartment, car and a couple of girls I was dating. I lost it all, and had to start all over again once I got out. I don't think young people of this current generation would put up with it. Let alone their sissy-assed parents.

(the Crypto-Jew)Joe...What Ann Coulter and myself are pointing out lately is that we need to be loyal to our own citizen soldiers' situation more than we are loyal to the Northern Alliance's situation in Afghanistan. Continual war is not an answer. And pretending that we are winning something we can defend without a continual war in Afghanistan is not an answer.

And how are we NOT being true, Trad? I mean is or was the evilllll Booosh kidnapping the members of the GANG’s family’s, holding them hostage, forcing the GANG members to re-enlist, or have their daughters sold into chattel slavery as Republican “Hand Maidens?” You don’t want an all expense paid trip to Southwest Asia, for service in a reasonably rat-free camp, a chance to meet exotic people and kill them…just don’t sign the papers!

And the Taliban what did they do to us? Sure they trained 20,000 Al-Qaida “fighters” and provided the home port for Usama and the base for 9/11 but beyond that what? I think they’ve learned their lesson. They certainly are more modern, before they used stones and clubs on womyn they disagreed with. Now poison gas, I’m SURE that things will work out just peachy for all the folks of Afghanistan, Tel Aviv, New York and Boston if we just come home.

"Those are things that any bad person can pull off. Poison gas is chemical warfare-- a different category altogether. It is very politically convenient for the American establishment to be able to claim that the Taliban are resorting to attacks with chemical weapons on schoolgirls."

Oh bull SHIT Julius.

I could poison gas people just as easy as poison gassing gophers, or termites, or fumigating nematodes. There's any number of additional things people combine by accident and poison gas themselves.

(the Crypto-Jew)I had a job, apartment, car and a couple of girls I was dating. I lost it all, and had to start all over again once I got out.

But you had a stylin’ hair-cut…a rock-hard physique…and the Hippy Chic’s must have thrown themselves at you. Plus don’t forget the GI Bill and the money that Uncle Sugar so generously gave you! You came out much the better I’m sure, and with a Marketable Job Skill…at a minimum the ability to kill people with the M-14, the M-79, the M-60 GPMG (My favourite implement of destruction) and a working knowledge of the M-18 Claymore. And that’s just assuming you were a Combat MOS…you might have learned Chartered Accountancy or something. And that’s’ almost completely ignoring the word “F#ck” which is an invaluable addition to any young man’s vocabulary.

(the Crypto-Jew)I DustBunnyQueen: whose boyfriend/fiance was drafted and killed in 1968..

My deepest condolences…

You know I could have served too, dearie…Certainly all my friends have humped a ruck for Uncle Sugar, some several times…in combat. So I think I might have some small glimpse of the cost of service to the US Armed Forces and its service members.

'You know I could have served too, dearie…Certainly all my friends have humped a ruck for Uncle Sugar, some several times…in combat. So I think I might have some small glimpse of the cost of service to the US Armed Forces and its service members.'

Here, since you didn't get it the first time even after you copied and pasted, read it again.

Dude, my point if you were not so goddam stubborn to realize is, that the right uses Bushitler way more than the left ever did. YOUR LINKS PROVE THAT. 3 dumbfucks in the comments at DU versus a page of links to righties using the term. It's classic right wing warfare. Construct humongous strawman and attack from it.

Everyone that disagrees with this strawman has a derangement symdrome!

"I don't like my phone tapped."

Yeah!? You mean you don't want to wiretap terrorists who behead people?????

Well reasoned. I didn't realize that only fawning and syrupy "love and pathos" for the young men and womyn of our Armed Services were acceptable.

What's your FUCKING PROBLEM?

How lame. You dont have the first clue what its like being in a victor unit on the FEBA.

And I know you. You're the guy at the bar state-side, telling any bimbo who will listen that you were Spec Ops.

Go fuck yourself.

And what's your fucking problem ass-wipe!?!?! Did I ever claim to be a bad-ass Ranger like Miccah Wright or Jesse MacBeth?

So fuck you...you want to be a professional victim/veteran?

If you served thank you for your service, but beyond that get off my ass!

I've never heard of a"Victor" unit, want to fill me in or was that when you were in SOG-V going "over the fence" and if you told me, you'd have to kill me and put my head in a safe?

Sorry I'm not buying "Broken Army/Broken Soldiers" mayhap that's HOW YOU relate but it ain't how I relate. They're all big girlz and boys, who know, by now-and if they don't they're too fucking stupid to live, then-what they are in for, when they sign on the dotted line and raise their right hands. And many of them have raised their right hands once or twice SINCE 2001. They have my RESPECT, not my PITY...

But if there is some confuion..GANG= Georgia (GA) National Guard...the 48th Brigade is the 48th GANG...not a reference to their socio-economic status.

Allan S...I understand you, and I agree that a draft is not going to work today. That means we have to retain our trained regular forces at re-enlistment year, or at the least convince them to stay on retirement pay track by committing to continue to serve in the combat units of the National Guard. The family men in the Guard require occasional years time off here in the USA. You ask too much. WW II men were in 3 1/2 years or less and many suffered terribly from that long a sacrifice. What the hell do we expect from men who know what we don't know which is that Afghanistan is a lost cause?

Garage: I think you would have to scan the zillions of comments in lefty blogs to fully comprehend the use of the bushitler moniker from the left. If you didn't notice it then, then good for you. If you think the right made it up you are mistaken. If you think the right over uses it now you are probably right, but they have adopted it as a bit of an ironic phraseology during the dark days of lefty ascendancy. Trust me on this, it was a very widely used phrase amongst the more juvenile and anti war bunch.

Honor, service, dedication. If only the fighting mattered anywhere near as much as giving people something to fight for. Unfortunately, only Dead Julius gets this little part (as shown @ 2:22). And of course, everyone predictably lambastes him for that.

This has been going on for much longer than the morning you woke up and decided to blame terrorism, Islamic extremism, $1 trillion in missing funds to fight wars and be the world's policeman on the left, Synova.

But now you have something to care about. Bully for you. I'm glad.

Now go figure out how to finance it, how to measure success and how many years we have to remain invested in empty outposts until they are populated by feminists who just can't stand to find their way to a real city -- like all those prissy women.

You won't, of course. You just want something to fight for and your coddlers are more than happy to provide it to you.

But I'm sure flights to Afghanistan are still available for volunteers, Synova. If you want to be respected for lacking hypocrisy, I'd have no problem with you deciding to take one.

If you can't... have access to doctors... then please die quietly so it doesn't get anyone all worked up.

How about access to emergency rooms as makeshift primary care centers? Would that count, Synova? How about homegrown ways of removing salmonella from the eggs? How about bankruptcy (or, of course, death) for getting the unprofitable medical condition?

g-m tried this one: "Dude, my point if you were not so goddam stubborn to realize is, that the right uses Bushitler way more than the left ever did."

Dude, it was my point and you completely fucking missed it in your effort to hijack it.

As I and a few others have also pointed out to you a few times - the right does it sarcastically, satirically, ironically, facetiously, and any other term that denotes a lack of sincerity. The left, like the fucking clowns at the bottom of what I cited, fucking believes the Bushitler meme.

And spare your bullshit strawman projection, you lefties have the market cornered on that.

Ritmo seems to be unaware and uncaring that women in Afghanistan under the Taliban were prohibited from education and also prohibited from seeing male doctors or nurses. Please explain how one gets a female doctor or nurse or even rudimentary pre-natal care when women can't be trained to provide these services. Oh wait... quaint brown people have native medicine and old ladies to birth babies, so that's all ethnic and shit and thus even *better* than what we do.

Comparing access for women to medicine in Afghanistan to the "horror" of American health care is not just hypocritical but obscene.

"This has been going on for much longer than the morning you woke up and decided to blame terrorism, Islamic extremism, $1 trillion in missing funds to fight wars and be the world's policeman on the left, Synova.'

And prior to 9-11 it was a rally cry for liberals and feminists across the world.

Funny how that works.

The horrors of life for women in Afghanistan were a great feminist cause and we were supposed to do something about it. Back then, before our distasteful military involvement and the influx of aid workers, the horror stories weren't seen as propaganda but a call to action, a call to social justice and human dignity.

So what happened Ritmo? Why was it, back then, a story about some poor woman jumping from her upper story apartment window and smashing herself to death on the sidewalk below was a *legitimate* news item to raise awareness in us about how soul killing the rules restricting women were in that country? Barred from school and education, from any sort of outside work or even from leaving a small apartment without the escort of a male family member was something we were supposed to care deeply about.

Now, on the other hand, news reports about the oppression of girls and the continuing attitudes that could well remove the right to education for them once again are seen as manipulative efforts rather than important awareness raising efforts?

Why?

A cynical person would conclude that the value of soccer stadium executions was to infuse a sense of purpose and worth to the liberal and feminist activists. It had value to them for this oppression and horror to continue because they'd continue to have purpose and self-value as they demonstrated their caring in a non-hypocritical way of doing jack shit about it.

If you want hypocrisy, Ritmo, you've got it right there. Calls to action and self-serving righteousness that lasts just so long as no one is doing anything about it.

The count is 2-2. Synova at bat. RitmoLibtard winds up and tosses a curveball to the inside. Synova swings...

A cynical person would conclude that the value of soccer stadium executions was to infuse a sense of purpose and worth to the liberal and feminist activists. It had value to them for this oppression and horror to continue because they'd continue to have purpose and self-value as they demonstrated their caring in a non-hypocritical way of doing jack shit about it.

THWACK!

Deep long drive to center field! Its going! Its going! Its GONE! Synova nails one out of the park.

Western forces fighting in southern Afghanistan had a problem. Too often, soldiers on patrol passed an older man walking hand-in-hand with a pretty young boy. Their behavior suggested he was not the boy's father. Then, British soldiers found that young Afghan men were actually trying to "touch and fondle them," military investigator AnnaMaria Cardinalli told me. "The soldiers didn't understand."

All of this was so disconcerting that the Defense Department hired Cardinalli, a social scientist, to examine this mystery. Her report, "Pashtun Sexuality," startled not even one Afghan. But Western forces were shocked - and repulsed. For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers. Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means "boy player." The men like to boast about it. "Having a boy has become a custom for us," Enayatullah, a 42-year-old in Baghlan province, told a Reuters reporter. "Whoever wants to show off should have a boy."

...As for Karzai, an American who worked in and around his palace in an official capacity for many months told me that homosexual behavior "was rampant" among "soldiers and guys on the security detail. They talked about boys all the time." He added, "I didn't see Karzai with anyone. He was in his palace most of the time." He, too, declined to be identified.

In Kandahar, population about 500,000, and other towns, dance parties are a popular, often weekly, pastime. Young boys dress up as girls, wearing makeup and bells on their feet, and dance for a dozen or more leering middle-aged men who throw money at them and then take them home. A recent State Department report called "dancing boys" a "widespread, culturally sanctioned form of male rape."

Some people learn after 9 years and some don't. Let me know how much progress you're willing to make on the little boys after you've somehow educated all the poor little girls.

Oh, and I almost forgot. Is it hypocrisy that's preventing you from getting on that plane to Kabul or do you lose something when going from going from armchair activism to the real thing? How educated were you an Afghan culture and society to begin with?

Do let me know, Synova. There's a whole country just crying out for... YOU!

Armchair activist. The situation in South Asia is making the arms on your armchair a little less comfortable. How horrifying.